Category Archives: green onions

Jack is Cooking Tofu with Cashew Nuts

Posted on by under black pepper, cashew nuts, chilli sauce, fish sauce, garlic, green onions, ketchup, onions, oyster sauce, red chillies, soy sauce, tofu, Tomato

Well Hello Internet!

Today i have a Thai recipe to share.  You may recall seeing this at your local Thai establishment as Chicken with Cashew Nuts.  Its pretty good with chicken, but i find it much easier to keep Tofu in my fridge, as it has quite a longer shelf life.  It’s a pretty good substitute if you fry it up first.  Feel free to use chicken if you want for the original version.
Here’s what you’ll need to make it the tofu way:

Half a Block of Tofu (cubed, and fried until golden and crispy)
2 tbspns of Cashew nuts (lightly fried)
1/2 an onion (sliced in moon slivers)
2-3 dried red chillies
2 cloves garlic
cherry tomatoes  (optional)

spring onion (optional garnish)

for the sauce:
1 tbspn oyster sauce
1/2 tbspn soy sauce
1/2 tbspn fish sauce
1/2 tbspn ketchup
1/2 tbspn chilli sauce
a couple of drops black soy sauce
1/2 tspn sugar
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1.  heat some oil in a pan, and add the garlic and red chillies.  When the garlic begins to brown a little add in the tofu.  (if you are going to use chicken, this is when to add the raw chicken,  cook it until it is cooked  90% through)

2.  add the onions, cherry tomatoes, and cashews

Onions, Tofu and Cashew Nuts
3. while the onions are cooking, mix all the sauce ingredients together:
Sauce

4.  Add the sauce to the pan, with a little water.  Stir and fry to mix together.

Veggies, Sauced

5. Serve with Rice, and garnish with green onions if you have them!

Tofu and Cashew Nuts with Rice

And That’s it!  a super easy thai dish to make, with very little ingredients.

mmmm mmmm delicious

Jack is Cooking Some Kind of Beef Noodles (take II)

Posted on by under beef, garlic, ginger, green onions, noodles, onions, pepper, sake, spinach, Tomato

Well Hello Internet!

its been a long time.  almost a year since my last post!  don’t worry i’ve still been eating cooking a lot!  but i’ve mainly been playing with old recipes and so didn’t think i should post the same thing twice.  but since i’ve got this here website i figured i should probably start posting on it again!

So One dish that was really awesome that i made a while ago, (and took a picture of!) was this awesome beef noodle soup dish that i found in a magazine (Saveur).  I didn’t exactly make what the recipe in the magazine said, i made my own thing out of it.

So here’s what you’ll need:

1 lb of beef – doesn’t matter what cut, but its nice if it has bones in it.  i used a T-Bone steak, (which i am sorry to say had been in my freezer for too long, and had gotten a bit of Freezer burn on it.  it wouldn’t have been good as a plain steak, but was perfect for this soup)

GROUP A
1/4 cup sake
2 teaspoons mixed pepper corns
2 cloves of garlic (smashed)
1/2 can crushed tomatoes
1 pod star anise
1/2 onion
2 dried red chillies
a bunch of ginger (like 2 inches)

GROUP B
1 teaspoon vinegar,
1  teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil

GROUP C
fresh spinach
fresh egg noodles – the really thin kind!
a green onion
sesame seeds

So First, cut up the steak into random sized chunks, and throw all the meat and the bones into a pot of water.  bring this to a boil, and then drain the water.  take the beef and the bones and put it back in the pot with everything from the list in Group A.  cover this with water, and bring it back to a boil.  let it simmer for about an hour.

Then! after one hour, remove the beef from this stock and set it aside on a cutting board.  strain the liquid  so that you have a nice broth, and discard all the onions and ginger pieces, and whatever else may have been in the stock.  Cut the Beef into nice bite sized pieces.  you can now get rid of the bones, as their delicious goodness has been transferred into the stock.

Add everything from GROUP B (the soy sauce etc.) into the broth, and add the newly bite sized beef back into the broth.

In a separate pot, cook the noodles for their specified cooking time.  if they are fresh that will only be 2 minutes or so.  remove the noodles, and place them in the serving bowls.  SAVE THE WATER!
then cook (BLANCHE!) the spinach in the water.  remove the spinach from the water and put it into the bowls with the noodles.

Then take a Ladle, and ladle the nice broth over the noodles and spinach, making sure to get the good beef stuff into the bowls too.  garnish it with some Green Onions, and Sesame Seeds, and you have a Delicious Beef Noodle Soup Dish!

Heres what it looked like, PLUS the original picture from the magazine.

mmm mmm delicious!

P.S.   the original recipe which i adapted this from can be found here:
http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Hong-Shao-Niu-Rou-Mian-Taiwanese-Beef-Noodle-Soup

Jack is Cooking a Peanut Butter Rice Casserole Thing

Posted on by under carrot, coconut milk, garlic, ginger, green onions, milk, peanut butter, red pepper, rice, sweet potato

Well Hello Internet!

tonight for dinner, i have made a delicious Rice Casserole thing.  im not really sure what you would call it. but its got rice, and vegetables, and peanut butter in it, and its really really good!  the other really awesome thing about this is that it all happens in one pot, or pan, so the cleanup is very minimal.

Heres what i used:
2 tablespoons oil
2 green onions
1 cup of rice
1/2 cup of stock
1 slice of ham (totally optional)
1/2 to 1 whole red pepper
2/3 cup of milk (you can also use coconut milk, which makes this even more delicious)
2-4 cloves garlic
2 inches of ginger
1/2 teaspoon sriracha sauce
salt
3 tablespoons of peanut butter
1 small can of chopped tomato
1 large sweet potato, or a few small ones
1 carrot
baby bok choy

heres everything all chopped up and ready to go:

so the first step, is to mix the peanut butter, the milk, the garlic, and the sriracha sauce together in a bowl.

then in the casserole pan (or dutch oven)

put the oil.  then the onions.  then the rice:

then add the stock:
lay the slice of ham on top of this. ( i recommend slicing some holes in the ham so that the milk mixture while incorporate with the rice mixture below)  on top of the ham put the peppers and the ginger:
Pour the milk and PB mixture over this.  then put the carrot, the tomato, and then sweet potato over that:
Finally, put the Bok Choy over everything, and drizzle some spicy sesame oil on it:
Cover with tinfoil and bake in the oven at 450° for 45 minutes
take out and enjoy!
keep the leftovers in the fridge.  its even better the next day!
mmm mmm delicious.

Jack is Cooking Cold Sesame Noodles

Posted on by under carrot, green onions, peanut butter, sesame oil, sesame seeds, soy sauce

Well Hello Internet!

phew the holidays are over!  i feel like i cooked a ridiculous amount of food, some of which has made it up here, some of which will make it up here eventually, and some of it that just slipped through the cracks!

anyways, as a result of all the cooking i did, be it cookies,  turkey, beef wellington,  pot pies, and whatever else i made, Butter has now become my number one used ingredient!  yum!  if you want to know how i can tell, if you look over in the right hand column of this blog you will see a list of ingredients.  every time i do a post i put the ingredients as labels, and it tallies them and puts them in descending order from most used to least used.

if you were to click on these ingredients you can then see all the recipes used involving that ingredient.

all that aside

Cold Sesame Noodles!  these are delicious, and they have no butter in them!  i need a break from butter!

they are super easy.

heres what you’ll need

1 tablespoon peanut butter
1 tablespoon soy sauce (shoyu)
1 tablespoon hot toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon olive oil
sesame seeds (optional)
1 carrot – julienned or i like to just use the peeler, and peel it all the way to the core (optional)
1 green onion (optional)
some kind of noodles, udon, soba, rice, or just plain old spaghetti (enough for 1 person but not enough for 2)

ok so take all the sauces, and whisk them together in a bowl

then, cook the noodles as per the instructions on your noodle packet
if you are using carrots, when there is 1 minute or less left for the noodles, throw the carrots in with them.  this will soften them slightly, but they will still be nice and crunchy. 
strain the carrots and the noodles, and run cold water over them to stop the cooking and turn them cold.
then put them in the bowl with the sauce mixture
toss everything until the sauce is coating the noodles nicely, throw on the green onions
and you have a delicious meal or snack! 
mmmm mmmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking Thanksgiving Leftover Empanadillas

Posted on by under chipotle, empanada, empanadillas, garlic, green onions, green pepper, ham, paprika, red pepper, saffron, Thanksgiving, turkey
Well Hello Internet!
As always, there is leftovers from thanksgiving, and normally i take all these different things and i make a big turkey pot pie out of them.  However this year we had LOTS of leftovers, and after picking for 2 days, and countless sandwiches, i decided that the pie i was going to make needed to not taste like thanksgiving anymore, because everybody was pretty bored of it by now!
So i decided to make Empanadillas (which are a kind of Tapas) out of the leftovers, and the greatest part is, that pretty much all the ingredients are from the leftovers, with only 2 added ingredients!
Heres what i used:
Leftover Roasted Peppers, and Asparagus
Leftover Turkey, and Ham (we had a ham also for thanksgiving this year)
This isn’t a leftover: one small chopped onion
You will also need:
some garlic
2 tomatoes (or canned diced tomatoes- i used some leftover homemade tomato sauce)
paprika
saffron
chipotle powder
lemon
salt and pepper
puff pastry
1 egg plus some water
olive oil
So i sauteed the onion in the olive oil until the onion was soft
Then i added the paprika (about 1-2 teaspoons), and a couple of strands of saffron.
Then i added the tomatoes.  i covered the pan and cooked over low heat for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, i mixed in the turkey, ham, and roasted peppers into the mix.  this i left uncovered and cooked for another 10 minutes or so, to let all the tomato-ey goodness soak into the turkey.
i decided it needed a little kick so i put in a tiny bit of chipotle powder, and squeezed some lemon juice in.
Then i cut circles out of the puff pastry dough (i used the frozen stuff.  puff pastry takes forever to make!)  i put 1 or 2 tablespoons of filling on the circles.
Folded them over and crimped them with a fork.  Then i brushed them with my egg wash.  The egg wash is just one egg, with a little water mixed in.  This makes the pastry nice and golden when it cooks.
baked them for 20 minutes at 350°
heres how they turned out!
These things are ridiculously delicious, easy to make, and much more interesting than the classic leftover pot pie!
mmmm mmmm delicious!